Main menu

Monthly Archives: November 2015

Nespekashuti has been in the Artifact Lab for several months now and I’m finally ready to say that I’m (almost) finished with his treatment. I say *almost* because I saved one of the most difficult decisions for last – what to do about the gaping hole in his wrappings over his mouth. While I’m not quite ready to take the official after treatment images yet, I am going to post photos of how he looks in his nearly-complete status, along with explanations of what the treatment entailed. (I’ll also admit that posting these things on the blog helps me process my feelings about certain treatments, so thanks in advance for reading.) This post will focus on what I did with Nespekashuti, since I’ve touched on the treatment of his coffin in earlier posts here and here.

Nespekashuti before (left) and after (or nearly complete, on the right) conservation treatment

Let’s play a little game of spot the difference. I’ll post the image again below, circling areas on the before treatment image that I addressed during the treatment. Some of these things are easy to spot while others are more subtle.

The red circles on the left highlight areas addressed during the conservation treatment

– Let’s start from the bottom-up. During my initial examination I noticed that his feet were re-wrapped at some point with what looks like ancient linen. This re-wrapping probably happened before we acquired Nespekashuti in 1893 because in images of him from the Archives, the wrapping around his feet looks the same.

After some poking and prodding of this area, I decided to pull back the newer wrappings around his feet, which revealed this underneath:

Views under the newer linen wrappings from the front (left) and underside (right)

I can see why someone decided to re-wrap them – the wrappings underneath are significantly deteriorated and darkened, and on the underside, there are some bones exposed. Since we do not know when the newer linen was added (radiocarbon dating might provide more information but it also might not, since it is quite possible that the newer linen is also ancient and could be as old as the original linen) I did not remove it completely. The only change I made in this area was to clean up all of the powdery, deteriorated linen underneath and to encapsulate the damaged wrappings around the feet with nylon bobbinet before putting the newer linen back in place.

– The next three red circles indicate areas where I realigned the linen and removed very deteriorated linen where it was fully detached. I actually did this all over the mummy, but these are areas where it is more obvious. In order to keep the realigned linen in place after making these adjustments, I encapsulated the mummy from his neck to his ankles in nylon bobbinet, toned with acrylic paint to camouflage it.

Preparing to encapsulate Nespekashuti with the nylon bobbinet

In the image above, you can see the nylon bobbinet draped over Nespekashuti’s body. I secured the bobbinet by tucking it under his body and placing Tyvek-covered Ethafoam blocks in strategic areas between the body and the inside of the coffin (the Tyvek was also toned with acrylic paint to camouflage the blocks).

– The red circle around the amulet on Nespekashuti’s chest is to indicate that I removed it for treatment. The amulet is actually not associated with the mummy at all – it was placed there for exhibition. The amulet is made of faience, dates to the New Kingdom/19th Dynasty, and was excavated from Aniba, Nubia by Charles Leonard Woolley in the early 20th century. It may be replaced for exhibition, but at this point I am not replacing it until our curators have a chance to weigh in.

– Finally, the most obvious part of the treatment is that I made a covering for Nespekashuti’s mouth. I continue to emphasize that the covering is fully removable – it can just be plucked out in pieces with tweezers if necessary. Here is a detail image showing the covering:

Detail of Nespekashuti’s head/chest from the left side, after encapsulation and with the mouth covering

And here is another one from the right side comparing him before and after encapsulation and with the mouth covering:

Nespekashuti before (above) and after (below) treatment (click on image to enlarge)

You can see how this all looks from the front in the very first image I posted, but I’m focusing on how he looks from the side since he was previously displayed like this and this is most likely how he will be viewed when on exhibit in the future.

I made the fill by first covering his exposed teeth and surrounding bone with nylon bobbinet, then I layered the exposed area with Japanese tissue paper toned with acrylic paint, and finally I layered some toned bobbinet over the paper. All of the fill materials are tucked into the damaged linen around the loss in this area.

If our curators agree that the treatment is complete and that the fill can be left in place for now, I’ll call the treatment done and finish all of the after treatment documentation. I know that our visitors and readers of this blog were divided on what to do about the mouth, but I think we can all agree that Nespekashuti has received the much-needed care that he deserves. Please write in with any comments or questions you have about any aspect of this treatment! I will be sure to post something on the blog if we make any additional changes, or decide to scrap the mouth covering all together.

A year ago, I wrote about some cartonnage that we received as a donation from Helena Rubinstein back in 1953. I started working on it but after realizing what a complex project it was going to be, decided to save it for one of our graduate interns to work on (I like to think we save the best stuff for them, and sometimes best = complicated). We didn’t have to wait too long, since this fall we were joined by Eve Mayberger, a 4th year NYU intern who is with us for the academic year, and she was happy to take on the cartonnage as one of her many projects.

One of the reasons the cartonnage is in the lab is because it’s attached to a really ugly old mount, which is no longer providing sufficient support. To remind you, here is what it looked like when it entered the lab:

Not only do we want to get the cartonnage off of this old mount, but the way the pieces are attached to the mount complicates examination and our understanding of their materials and construction. Basically, this old mount isn’t doing the object any favors, and there’s not much we can do with the object while it’s on the mount.

Eve has spent some time documenting and examining the cartonnage pieces in the Artifact Lab and today she decided to bite the bullet and actually start removing them from the mount. She started with the chest piece (the uppermost piece in the image above). It was secured to the mount primarily through 2 large screws and several smaller nails. Just a few minutes ago, Eve calmly removed the last of the hardware and we were finally able to free this piece from the mount – hurrah!

Eve examining the backside of the cartonnage, recently freed from the old mount

Here is a detail of what the back looks like:

View of the reverse of the cartonnage chest piece, after removal from the mount.

Of course now that we can see the other side, we have even more questions about what was done to this piece historically versus what is part of its original construction. Eve will continue to examine this piece and do some more research before beginning the treatment. We will provide updates as she proceeds.